Yik Yak talks back - and sometimes it's threats on schools

Chat app voices teens' antics, angst - and threats

TO GO WITH AFP STORY by Rob LEVER, US-IT-Internet-teen-trend
A March 28, 2014 photo illustration shows websites for several anonymous social networking apps in Washington, DC. When a new social app Yik Yak swept into Auburn University, some of the coolest kids started posting comments on it.
But no one knows who is making the comments, because the posts are anonymous. "It spread pretty fast," says Nickolaus Hines, a junior at the Alabama university. "The majority of things are jokes or things which are obviously funny."
But Hines added that "some of the things are pretty mean," and that "the ones about girls get taken off if the girls see them." Yik Yak, which allows users to see posts in a radius up to eight kiolometers (five miles) is part of a flurry of new apps which offer new ways to interact anonymously in social networks. AFP PHOTO/Mandel NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

TO GO WITH AFP STORY by Rob LEVER, US-IT-Internet-teen-trend
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A recent bomb threat alerted many Memorial High School parents and administrators to something that many Houston-area students already knew about: Yik Yak, a smartphone app that functions as a kind of cyber-bathroom wall, allowing users to post anything at all anonymously.

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